Floss in Cadastre and Land Registration

Structure and content

The publication is structured in the following five chapters.

Chapter 2 is providing some background information on the Open-Source con-

cept. The first section gives an insight into the Governance side of Open-Source; 

the second section introduces the terminology and basic concept of open-source 

software; while the third section presents open-source software for geospatial 

data and the establishment of OSGeo, a foundation for open-source software in 

the geospatial domain.

Chapter 3 presents an overview of existing open-source tools and projects for 

the management of land information. The first section is looking at the software 

needs for cadastre and land administration systems and gives an overview of exist-

ing open-source tools and and possibilities. The second section looks into the 

 experiences and lessons from an existing platform for open-source development, 

the GeoNetwork project. This section provides experiences in how to manage an 

open-source project, how user and developers communities are formed and sheds 

light on the steps to take for an open-source project in order to become a mature 

OSGeo project. The third section describes the OSCAR project, which is to de-

velop operational open-source modules for use in several country case studies. The 

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OSCAR project is commissioned by FAO and carried out by the University of  Otago 

in Dunedin, New Zealand. The fourth section presents the initiative taken by FAO 

to support the building and use of open-source products in the cadastral and land 

registration field. The fifth section introduces the “Social Tenure Domain Model”, 

a standardized data modelling approach, a crucial aspect for the open-source idea 

in the geospatial domain, in particular the cadastral field.

Chapter 4 then gives the perspectives of six countries or states that already 

have adopted or are planning to adopt an open-source policy for their software 

application approach. It gives experiences and valuable recommendations for 

 others.

Chapter 5 finally draws some conclusions.

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2.  Background on Open-Source  

and Linkage to Cadastre

1

 

FAO-NLRA, see http://www.fao.org/nr/ltenure/lt-home/en/

2.1  Open-Source Software and Responsible Governance  

of Cadastral Systems

 

Mika-Petteri Törhönen, Rumyana Tontchovska, Gertrude Pieper